Archive for June 2009

I've been using Twitter for a few months now (see Twitter: Three Benefits to Bloggers). It's a quick way to promote blog content, and it allows me to write quick updates that I wouldn't want to do a whole blog entry for.

It was pretty cool when people started following me. But I've realized some "followers" are just spammers in disguise. They'll set up a profile, put an entry with some kind of spammy website (sometimes a porn site), and then start following whoever they find. I guess the idea is to get me to visit the site, as well as others who may check out my followers. Needless to say, I'm now having to check every profile that follows me and make sure it isn't Twitter spam. I don't want my Twitter account to have questionable profiles on it. Just another way spammers make our lives miserable.

If you've checked the Entrecard blog you've noticed a couple of new things:

1. They are cashing out credits.

My thoughts: I'm glad to see this, but when will EC be able to give us full credits for ads purchased on our site? I thought the cash-out would elliminate "credit inflation" and allow all credits paid to go to members.

2. Only EC blogs are allowed to be paid advertisers.

My thoughts: I really liked this move. Not only does it award loyal EC members, but it seems it would help with click-through-rate on ads: I'm more likely to check out an ad if I know I can earn a click point.

But I've noticed something else: it seems the credit value of my blogs have gone down lately. In other words, people just aren't willing to "pay" as much to advertise--even on my fitness blog, which gets about 1,000 hits a day. Anyone else notice this, or is just me?

I've had a nasty infection on my PC--the Trojan.vundo.H trojan horse. I had Mcafee but it didn't seem to help. Mcafee was disabled every time I booted up my computer.

I looked for a solution on several forums and tried to follow their instructions--nothing worked. The programs I used would find and (temporarily) remove virus, but it would be right back as soon as I rebooted the computer.

After a few hours of this I decided I'd be better off just reformatting my PC. I've rebooted and installed AVG (and superantispyware as an additional layer of protection). Both of these are free--I don't see the use in paying for a Mcafee subscription again this year.